Chapter 9

A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneous knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great length for the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity in the works of his creation. One of the most striking of his illustrations is as follows:—“The coral polypi, united by a common animal bond, construct a defined form in stone; many kinds construct many forms. An allotted instinct may permit each polypus to construct its own cell, but there is no superintending one to direct the pattern, nor can the workers unite by consultation for such an end. There is no recipient for an instinct by which the pattern might be constructed. It is God alone, therefore, who is the architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of every new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar position, which the animal could not have discovered by itself. Yet more, millions of these blind workers unite their works to form an island, which is also wrought out according to a constant general pattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate coral works are numerously diverse. Still less, then, here is an instinct possible. The Great Architect himself must execute what he planned, in each case equally. He uses these little and senseless animals as hands; but they are hands which himself must direct. He must direct each one everywhere, and therefore he is ever acting.” {159} This is a most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning. It is now believed that corals have a general life and sensation throughout the whole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them; consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in their determinate general forms than in those of other animals.

It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony in all the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths. First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creation by natural law. Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology tells us of the succession of species appears natural and intelligible. Organic life _presses in_, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish. Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operating by laws.

It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is not merely the origination of organic being upon this little planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands of series, the whole of which again form but one portion of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous. We have to suppose, that every one of these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic being, or in the way of becoming so. This is a conclusion which every addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible. Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence, that it should be constantly moving from one sphere to another, to form and plant the various species which may be required in each situation at particular times? Is such an idea accordant with our general conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author? Yet such is the notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special exercise. Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a creation by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.

Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can be no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form some satisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other spheres which move at such immense distances from us. Suppose that the first persons of an early nation who made a ship and ventured to sea in it, observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects which they had never before seen—namely, a fleet of other ships—would they not have been justified in supposing that those ships were occupied, like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row and steer, eyes to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to guide them from one place to another—in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing such differences as they knew to be producible by difference of climate and habits of life. Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with differences in the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some difference of conditions. Out of a certain number of the elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, both vegetable and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is here. We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life. Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading principle: therefore there must be a relation between the spheres and their respective organic occupants, by virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary, on the surface. Such a relation, of course, involves details as to the density and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the organic tenants, in proportion to the gravity of the respective planets—peculiarities, however, which may quite well consist with the idea of a universality of general types, to which we are about to come. Electricity we also see to be universal; if, therefore, it be a principle concerned in life and in mental action, as science strongly suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of one general character. We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when we advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that these are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to organic life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in other spheres also. The considerations as to light are particularly interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ, almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and precise relation to it. Where there is light there will be eyes, and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as may be necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is but a small stretch of the argument to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom being thus universal, a parity in all the other organs—species for species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom—is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space bear not only a general, but a particular resemblance to those of our own.

Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the idea of their having all come into existence by the operation of laws everywhere applicable, is only conformable to that principle, acknowledged to be so generally visible in the affairs of Providence, to have all done by the employment of the smallest possible amount of means. Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motions and geognostic arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them all with life. The whole productive or creative arrangements are therefore in perfect unity.

PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

THE general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been shewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to bring the assumption more nearly home to nature. Such facts there certainly are; but it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of nature’s profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter.

Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for example, in the well-known one called the _Arbor Dianæ_. An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, quickly gathers to itself the particles of the silver of the amalgam, which form upon it a _crystallization precisely resembling a shrub_. The experiment may be varied in a way which serves better to detect the influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below. {166} Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary appearances of the electric fluid. In the marks caused by positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves; those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, according as they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena seem to say that the electric energies have had something to do in determining the forms of plants. That they are intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in water charged with negative electricity, while water charged positively greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its beds. With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is generally charged positively, while the earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence here is curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical operation—the _brush_ realized. We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously affecting them according to their organic character, or respective germinal constituents. In the poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent; the reverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards; and so on. We can here see at least traces of secondary means by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms with which the earth is overspread.

Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four simple substances or elements—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. The first combinations of these in animals are into what are called proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c., out of which the structure of the animal body is composed. Now the chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two carbon, and two nitrogen, can _make urea_. Alantoin has also been produced artificially. Two of the proximate principles being realizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming all is established. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his power to realize the first step in organization. {169a} Indeed, it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations forming the proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity. “It is now certain,” he says, “that the same simple laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into their ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates, the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to be.” {169b} A particular fact is here worthy of attention. “The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is effected by the production of a secretion termed _diastose_, which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum into sugar. This diastose may be separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetable organization. He can also imitate its effects by other chemical agents.” {170} The writer quoted below adds, “No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had the power of bringing together the elements of any organic compound, in their requisite states and proportions, the result would be any other than that which is found in the living body.”

It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are composed. It is something more to know their first combinations, and that these are simply chemical. How these combinations are associated in the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given. The investigation of the minutiæ of organic structure by the microscope is of such recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to be very clear. Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard to the present inquiry. It is ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that is, cells having granules within them. Nutriment is converted into these before being assimilated by the system. The tissues are formed from them. The ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally only a cell with a contained granule. We see it acting this reproductive part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants. “The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules. These, at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutrition on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, which repeat the life of their original. Amongst the higher tribes of the cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure in all plants.” {171} _Here the little cell becomes directly a plant_, _the full formed living being_. It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast, becomes, without further process, the new creature. Further, it has been recently discovered by means of the microscope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of the infusory animalcules. One of the most remarkable of these, the _volvox globator_, has exactly the form of the germ which, after passing through a long fœtal progress, becomes a complete mammifer, an animal of the highest class. It has even been found that both are alike provided with those _cilia_, which, producing a revolving motion, or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this animalcule. These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, that they were made by various observers, distant from each other at the time. {172} It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short, _distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous generation_. So that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin; _the fundamental form of organic being is a globule_, _having a new globule forming within itself_, by which it is in time discharged, and which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession. It is of course obvious that, if these globules could be produced by any process from inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that the fact of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in that instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation by the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established. Now it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, that _globules could be produced in albumen by electricity_. If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This has not yet been effected; but it is known to be only a chemical process, the mode of which may be any day discovered in the laboratory, and two compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually been produced.

In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be precisely imitated artificially. Such an incrustation takes place on both the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleaching establishment, in which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime employed in its purification. From the _dressing_ employed by the weaver, the cloth obtains the animal matter, _gelatin_; this and the lime form the constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural shell. In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the phenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had required ten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in thickness. This incrustation has all the characters of shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture. The examination of it has even thrown some light on the character and mode of formation of natural shell. “The plates into which the substance is divisible have been formed in succession, and certain intervals of time have elapsed between their formation; in general, every two contiguous laminæ are separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing all the various colours of thin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses: between some of the laminæ no such film exists, probably in consequence of the interval of time between their formation being too short; and between others the film has been formed of unequal thickness. There can be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists between two laminæ, an interval too short for its formation, (arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,) has elapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and the deposition of another.” {175} From this it has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those colours of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from iridescent films deposited between the laminæ of its structure, and it is hence inferred that _the animal_, like the wheel, _rests periodically from its labours in forming the natural substance_.

These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but it will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination of life. Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of either plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having come into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation, since the time of which geology forms the record? It may be answered, that the negative of this question could not be by any means formidable to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions necessary for the operation of the supposed life-creating laws may not have existed within record to any great extent. On the other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still acting with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generally stable and at rest. Are there, then, any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during man’s existence upon earth? If there be, it clearly would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, as what now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparatively casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant globe with suitable tenants. It will at the same time be observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, and probably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation in science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative. This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficial observers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life, (as in the celebrated case in Virgil’s fourth Georgic,) either the direct contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation. Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarranted by, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophical investigation. Yet this is truly the point at which the question now rests in the scientific world.